<$BlogRSDURL$> Spontaneous Things: Karina Sumner-Smith's Blog
Thursday, January 01, 2004
 
My Computer is Dead

Long live my computer.

The poor thing had been clacking its death clacks for months, and dumping physical memory and shutting down spontaneously pretty much every day. I brought it home with me, but then was afraid to turn it on as I had a feeling that I could get it running once, maybe twice more and that would be it. So it sat.

Knowing of the laptop's pending demise, my father and I went out yesterday afternoon scouting for computer deals. (Though I know a deal, I'm not so good a knowing what, exactly, I need or want in a computer. I appreciated the help muchly.) We checked out Future Shop online, and Dell online, and went out voyaging to see if we could get a better deal at any of the local stores. We ended up at Business Depot and happened to stumble over the best deal imaginable.

We'd been looking at the Compaq computers, and there was a new-but-refurbished one for under $500 that looked interesting. The helpful sales guy guided us to the sales board at the front which detailed their limited time offer: buy one of the listed computers, and receive a monitor and a printer for free. While we didn't really need either, free things are nothing to scoff at, and listed there on the board was the computer we were looking at. Elsewhere on the board was another computer for $100 less, except that it was brand new and had a year-long warranty instead of only a 90-day one. "Hmm," we said. "What's the deal? Newer computer, more warranty, less money?"

That was the deal alright. It was a floor model so they'd discounted it even more. Brand new Compaq computer for under $400 Canadian? We took it.

But wait, the deal gets better. Instead of the cheap monitor that the guy had showed us, when it came time to get our free monitor the helpful computer sales guy wheels us over a brand new Compaq monitor. "Are we getting that one?" I muttered to Martin out the side of my mouth.

"Looks like it," he muttered back. "Don't. Say. Anything."

And then came the printer: a brand new HP colour printer, still sealed in its box.

The retail price for the monitor and printer are more than we paid for the computer. We ran for the car, afraid that at any second they'd tell us they'd made a mistake. But no. So here I am, typing to you on my new computer, looking at my new monitor, with my new printer hanging around here somewhere. I have no idea how these people make money, I really don't.

The only bad thing in this story is that I fired up my old laptop one more time to get some files off it--the exams I just wrote, a final essay or two, "A Prayer of Salt and Sand"--and when Martin went to restart it so we could transfer files across the network, it didn't start up again. I'm not too worried about the files, as I have hard copies of "Prayer" and the exams and essays are all handed in ... but still. Would be nice.

And now ... back to my quota.

Posted by Karina Sumner-Smith at 6:11 PM

0 Comments:

Post a Comment




Powered by Blogger


Spontaneous Things © Karina Sumner-Smith 2000-2005